At this moment Oprah is in her thin body, Valerie is in her heavy one and Kirstie is back in the Jenny Craig fold. I ‘get’ wanting to feel good and look good, and I am not calling anyone out because they want to be in better shape, but having spent most of my life on one diet or another, I can honestly say they all worked; as long as I never stepped out of that food monastery of rigidity I was safe. I am good at not eating. I can starve like a champion, and how awful is it that I am so good at something that real hungry people the world over don’t have a choice about. But at some point one has to step back out into the real world.

Armed with a post diet re-entry plan and a martyr-like zeal to remain vigilant against all the siren calls from my old friends cheese, chocolate and all things potato, I would get an invitation to a birthday party and I would sit on the sidelines, drinking my eighth glass of water to fill me up so as to keep me from succumbing to temptation.

But something, perhaps chocolate-lust, maybe even something far more deep seated but not yet an identifiable feeling would begin brewing and then BAM! - A volcanic, very familiar, fuck-it-all-to hell resentment at being the fat girl at the party would bubble to the surface and with all good intentions, a tiny sliver of cake would be cut. Just a small taste… But then the damage was done. What the hell! An unleashed starving woman was now on the rampage looking to fill a hole that had nothing to do with food.

Life is filled with myriad ups and downs and we cannot always be Teflon coated and stay the healthy course we would most want to be on. Sometimes we just cave in to the pressures and when we do - if we are prone to reaching for comfort in the way of food - our slip up, our pain, our anxiety… It shows. Let’s all cut each other some slack. Be kind. We are all in this together.

When I’m feeling blue and my energy is seeping away through every pore, my mind drifts in seemingly random directions… Outside my window, a scrum of unruly teens all engaged in distracting an ice-cream truck driver just long enough to make away with the frozen contents of his freezer – The bluest of skies plays host to two remarkably poodle-shaped clouds which I am fixated on until they join together to become one far less interesting wooly blob. Aimlessly, I begin counting and then recounting the grey and white tiles on the floor that appear to have faces embedded in their splatter pattern. I snap back to earth feeling out of sorts. Nothing is wrong but nothing stands out as a game changer either. The feeling is grey and foggy, shrouded like a mid-March morning.Stephen Hawking suddenly makes his presence known. WHAT?He recently died after a fifty-year battle with ALS. Truly unheard of… He’s looking straight at me. Piercing intelligence darting from his eyes. He is snaggle-toothed, shriveled and deformed and so much a part of our collective memory. He’s a genius, plucky and resolute to go beyond the body that has been determined to thwart him. He is a true seeker. A puzzle solver and door opener, never a complaint, just acceptance and indefatigable determination. Why is he here?Why is he so focused on me? Is he an angel? Is he my angel? Is he here to slap me upside my head? How dare I feel sorry for myself? How dare I think I have any real problems? I have four functioning limbs, a strong spine, along with a relatively good head on my shoulders. Nothing compared to the great and brilliant apparition looking into my very soul.My revelation comes like a blast of wintery air. He is here. I am to look at him – really look at his shriveled body and see that my problems are not problems. They aren’t even challenges. They are the bumps on the road of life. That’s it. That’s all. I have everything. I’m just low on gratitude for all the gifts I already possess.